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That third level... I've only gotten past it once. That was by managing to keep my diagonal lasers from the previous level.

@RadioPoultry That game is brutal. It's like you have to get a perfect run, and you keep rerunning it until you get it right. I get stopped out every right there at that ship where you're at. I've been past that level but not recently. Good luck to you!

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Got past the third level in one ship (I kept resetting if I died, lol). Anyway, didn't last long in the fourth level. It's so hard to get to it that I have no practice in it. Anyway, new high score for me.

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I need help getting by the first boss. Is it a matter of shooting him right in the center? Does it require super-charged shots?

Shoot him right in the middle of the tummy when his tail is down. My method is to shoot my Pod of 3 or more units (see instructions, photo included below) directly into the middle of his stomach so it goes inside and continues shooting him from within. The boss will die within seconds.

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May have figured out the third level a bit... gotten past it twice now in the last couple of days... funny thing is, it's actually hurt my high score some. I could usually get almost all the way to the end of the third level before dying. And I could do that with the subsequent lives, also. So I had essentially, level 1, level 2, and level 3 about three times. But since I'm so unfamiliar with level 4, I could get hardly anywhere in it. So it became level 1, level 2, level 3, and the beginning of level 4 three times. Don't know if that makes any sense, but doing 95% of level 3 three times got me more points than 100% of level 3 and 10% of level 4 three times. Anyway, this morning I started to figure out level 4... and got a new high score for this challenge. Then I used continues and figured out level 4 more and for the first time ever got to the boss! Anyway, my new high score for this challenge is now 167900. I've gotten higher in the past (broke the 200000 mark once), but this is the high so far for here.

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Also, although I'm no expert at this game... here's some tips that helped me out...

1. Turbo fire. It's on the real TurboGrafx controller, so I use it. I know you can do charged shots and all, but that just seems distracting to me and if you have the turbo on level 3 for button II, you can mow through most things pretty easily without bothering with charging shots. If you're playing with an emulator, you may be at a disadvantage. The emulators I've used at least, while they have an option for turbo fire, it's at a different frequency or does bursts then pauses, then bursts. The third level turbo fire on the real hardware pretty much gives you a steady stream of bullets out the front of your ship.

2. Use your pod. Pressing button I shoots your pod out from your ship. Pressing button I again, brings it back to you. While away from your ship, the pod continues to fire, and if you've got it leveled up to the second level, it fires in four directions. This can help destroy enemies that are hiding behind walls or around corners. Also, the pod itself is indestructible, so the pod itself can be a weapon and shield. Use this... get handy with switching it from the front of your ship to the back... use it to kill enemies coming from behind or to block bullets. Shoot it into the weak point of bosses and keep firing and let it do the dirty work. On the first boss, there's a weak point in its middle... shoot that bod in there, then move your ship up to the top of the screen (kind of in front of its eye) and keep firing. The boss can't hit you there, and he'll (he?) will go down quickly. On the second boss, the weak point is an eye that opens up on top. Put your pod on the front of your ship and nestle down right next to it so that every time it opens, the pod is hitting it, and just sit there firing. Gotta play with the hitboxes some to get in there as it doesn't look like it's possible, but it works... does take a bit of finesse, though.

3. Memorization. R-Type is definitely a memorization type of shooter. Knowing where the enemies are going to come from and getting ready to shoot them before they come on screen is super helpful. This isn't a game where you should react to things, this is a game where you plan. Trial and error in unfamiliar stages will help you learn patterns and which weapon you want to have. For example, I used the blue ricochet type lasers (blue powerup) exclusively for the first three levels, but it seems that the red and blue forward lasers (red powerup) are better for level 4. So near the end of level 3, I picked up the red powerup... so I'd have it at the beginning of 4. But I didn't know to do that until I got to level 4 a few times and figured out the blue weapons wasn't that helpful.

Oh wow, that snake in level 2 is part of the boss! I watched your video Justin and saw how to "park it in the safe spot". I'll try that next. Thanks!

That's exactly what I was about to recommend. I'm glad you saw that in the video! Easier demonstrated than explained. Carefully park your ship in that little spot and hang on tight. If you can do that and are powered with some decent power ups you should be alright.

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This is just like those after-school meet ups with friends in the 1980's...take turns playing and learn from each other what to do and what to try. So much fun! I love this game.

@RickR Here's my strategy for getting past that big ship in Stage 3. Something strange happened last night though, and I wanted to share this with you. When first approaching the ship from the previous Stage, I'm usually armed up with all of my power ups. That means the big pod at the front of my ship with the Blue Lasers. Approaching the ship from the back I fire at the center of the ship where the rocket is about to detach, as well as the top half of the ship to take out some of the guns towards the top. Once the rocket detaches from the back of the ship, I focus entirely on taking out the guns in the middle where the rocket housing is, and then take out the guns on the top of the back end of the ship. There's just enough time to do that before the ship starts moving up again. MEANWHILE I'm AVOIDING the two Yellow power ups, because I prefer the Blue Lasers for this stage.

Then I CAREFULLY approach underneath and attempt to take out the guns down below. I shoot out the big pod from the nose of my ship, let it go ahead of me shooting at the guns from the underside of the ship, while I keep my ship back and behind the ship where most of the gunfire can't get to me. Then once I've made a good sweep of the guns I reattach the big pod to the nose of my ship and move forward underneath shooting Blue Lasers which ricochet and bounce around hitting multiple targets. Everything I do down here I tend to do in a rotating sequence - one wave of shooting out the big pod from the nose of my ship to go ahead of me and do the dirty work, followed by a second wave of reattaching the big pod to the nose of my ship and using my Blue Lazers to take out everything with a little more precision. I go back and forth and this usually works.

When you get toward the front of the ship I use the same strategy but change my angle of attack. First I shoot out the big pod from the nose of my ship to take out the big cluster of guns at the front of the big ship. I do this two or three times until I've cleared most of the guns out. Then I reattach the big pod to THE BACK of my ship. I attach the big pod to the back of my ship so that it shoots BACKWARDS at the ship behind me. Your ship will be flying toward the right edge of the TV screen, and you have to be very careful not to run into anything that you can't see off the edge of the screen, but mostly you are using the big pod to fire at the ship behind you. Take out the guns, move your ship to the top right of the screen and slowly start moving your ship BACKWARDS back over the top of the big ship. There is a large pink phallic-looking drill in the middle-front of the ship that moves in and out. You have to shoot this a few times to destroy it. The safest and most effective way of doing this is to shoot out the big pod from the back of your ship to move back and fly over the drill and shoot down at it. You will have to do this a few times as your pod moves back towards you and reattaches to your ship. It's also possible to shoot the drill with your Blue Lasers if you can get the angle right.

Here's the weird thing that happened last night that I've never seen before: I was at the top using my Blue Lasers to shoot at the phallus, but kept missing. I did NOT destroy the phallus, new guns regenerated at the front of the enemy ship, and this went on for a few minutes. I couldn't get the right angle to get my Blue Lazers down there to take out the phallic-looking drill. Apparently though I survived long enough for the game to end on its own. The stage just ended. It went dark, gave me my score, and moved into Stage 4. It was almost too easy. So you don't actually have to destroy the ship, you just have to survive long enough that the game gets bored with you and moves on.

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What I've been doing with some success is almost exactly the same as your strategy. But I shoot the pod away less along the bottom I think. I keep it attached and use the ricochet lasers and the pod itself to take out guns. At some point the red powerup comes along (the one that shoots blue and red forward firing shots...) and I get that. Kind of wait under the cannons on the front to fire and then move out and reattach the pod on the back using the now rearward firing blue and red laser to destroy the guns. Here's where it gets hairy, though... There's limited space above the ship, but I try to reattach the pod to the front and then get down in that area where the phallus (lol) is to shoot it.

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What I've been doing with some success is almost exactly the same as your strategy. But I shoot the pod away less along the bottom I think. I keep it attached and use the ricochet lasers and the pod itself to take out guns.

That's what I'm doing, mostly. I jettison the pod at the beginning to break up some of the heavy fire under the ship, then come in and hit it hard with the Blue Laser. Sometimes I get the Red power up, but lately I've been carrying the Blue Laser all the way through because it's so good at ricocheting into tight spaces once you get underneath the ship and all the way back up on top.